Maxance Vincent
*Warning: The following article contains spoilers for episodes nine and ten of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.*
Between episode drops of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Captain America: Brave New World was released in cinemas. While I’ve been on the Spider-Man bandwagon since the premiere, albeit with slight reservations, the film side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has more than lacked the magic it had just ten years ago, and the fourth installment in the Captain America franchise may be the worst-ever movie of the entire MCU.
I’m hoping Marvel will find their magic again with the upcoming Thunderbolts* and The Fantastic Four: First Steps (not so much with Avengers: Doomsday, which doesn’t sound great, but we’ll see), though the television side has fared much better ever since the release of Loki – Season 2. Not everything has been spectacular, but at least there haven’t been more cataclysmic failures like Secret Invasion. With Marvel usually not delivering great finales (see: What If…? – Season 3), I was slightly concerned that Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man wouldn’t stick the landing in its last two episodes, Hero or Menace and If This Be My Destiny…
Thankfully, my concerns never came true. The final episodes are spectacular and fully solidify the series as one of the MCU’s best in the Disney+ era. Directors Liza Singer and Stu Livingston visualize two thrilling battles that put the friendly neighborhood Spider at the front and center of each emotional crux, whether in fighting Mac Gargan (Jonathan Medina) or helping Doctor Strange (Robin Atkin Downes) close a portal to outer space.
The ninth episode is far more personal than the tenth, with Peter Parker (Hudson Thames) not only saving Nico Minoru’s (Grace Song) life but also helping Lonnie Lincoln (Eugene Byrd) fight off the Scorpions. With Parker now wearing the MCU suit we know and love from Captain America: Civil War, he’s now ready to defeat Gargan once and for all, and hope that Lincoln will choose a path of righteousness away from the world of crime. This hope is exacerbated after the imposing Big Donovan (Leilani Barrett) leaves the battle in total fear for his life, with the 110th Street Gang in total disarray.
However, as Lonnie breaks into a truck filled with Otto Octavius’ (Hugh Dancy) technology, he is exposed to a mysterious substance that suddenly makes him stronger. It allows him to aid Spider-Man in defeating Gargan and, in the finale, slowly transforms his body. During their confrontation with Scorpion, Spider-Man takes Norman’s (Colman Domingo) teachings to heart, that with great power comes great respect, and almost kills Gargan after the pain he inflicted on him and so many innocent people. However, Lonnie stops Peter and tells him there’s a better way forward…even though he chooses not to leave the 110th Street Gang and instead rebuild it in the wake of Donovan’s disappearance.
Norman’s hidden agenda is also getting more explicit as he visits Octavius in prison, telling him that he has acquired all of his technology with the aid of the United States government and plans to study all of his inventions, likely to create something even more sinister. Speaking of, in the tenth episode, he reveals to his interns that their inventions were used to create Project Monolith, a gateway to the cosmos that would open up a door between the Earth and Outer Space. Before he opens it, however, he is visited by Doctor Strange, who specifically tells Osborn not to push the button.
He does so anyway, leading to the Symbiotic creature we saw in the first episode come through. The battle is relatively rudimentary until Strange uses the Eye of Agamotto to travel back in time in the hopes of subduing the Symbiote and lands…at Midtown High School, where it all began for Peter Parker. The spider that bit him doesn’t come from space but from Oscorp’s own lab, as Norman and his scientists are finding a way to replicate Spider-Man by injecting Peter’s blood into spiders!
Peter was bitten by a spider with his own blood. It’s a repurposing I never expected to see in a million years, let alone executed so brilliantly like this. Hats off to writers Chris Neuner and Jeff Trammell for pulling off the impossible and demonstrating the endless possibilities of the Marvel Multiverse smartly and engagingly. With The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) briefly appearing as Strange closes the portal and tells him he’ll do just fine without spoiling what his future awaits of him, things could get crazier in the show’s subsequent planned seasons.
And it looks to be that way. Norman doesn’t become the Green Goblin, but a natural evolution towards him may be at the heart of season two. Meanwhile, Harry (Zeno Robinson) decides to start his own company, the Worldwide Engineering Brigade (W.E.B.), to invite young scientists to continue their work without being kept in the dark about Norman’s secret projects. It is also revealed that Daredevil’s (Charlie Cox) tip in breaking into Oscorp was none other than Jeanne Foucault (Anjali Kunapaneni), already in her Finesse gear. Nice.
But the biggest kicker of it all happens at the very end, where Aunt May (Kari Wahlgren) is at a prison, waiting for her turn to be admitted to the visiting room. Who could she possibly speak to? It turns out that she’s here to see Richard Parker (Josh Keaton), Peter’s dad. The show cuts to black before we can process it, but the implications that he’s alive are huge. What does this mean? I don’t want to theorize anything, but it’s definitely going to be a primary narrative arc for season two, and it’s looking to be an even bigger entry in the MCU than the first.
Chat, are we back? Here’s hoping.
All episodes of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man are now available to stream on Disney+.
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